B. Eli’s Household 2:12-36

C. Samuel The Prophet 3-4:1

Even
though the priesthood under Eli had become hopelessly corrupt, Samuel did
what he could in service to God by assisting Eli.

This is a great model for
each of us as we go to work.

Maybe
your boss isn’t saved or an easy person to work for.

Don’t
work for your boss or even your employer – Work for your Lord; work for
Jesus.

Eph 6:5-8 • 5Bondservants,
be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and
trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ; 6not
with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing
the will of God from the heart, 7with goodwill doing service,
as to the Lord, and not to men, 8knowing that whatever good
anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord, whether he is
a slave or free.

Now we get a short &
bleak description of what those days were like spiritually.

And the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there
was no widespread revelation.

As we saw a couple Sundays
ago when we looked at this passage – while there were a few individuals
like Hannah & the prophet who rebuked Eli who enjoyed an intimate
experience with God, there was no national leader who stood as God’s
ordained spokesperson.

That was about to change.

2And it came to pass at that time, while Eli was
lying down in his place, and when his eyes had begun to grow so dim that he
could not see, 3and before the lamp of God went
out in the tabernacle of the Lord
where the ark of God was, and while Samuel was lying down, 4that the Lord
called Samuel. And he answered, “Here I am!”

Now we launch into the story
of Samuel’s call by God.

It
happened one night when Eli was old; his eyesight dimmed by age &
ill-health.[1]

Sometime during the night,
God called Samuel, who replied in the typical manner of a servant, “Here
I am.” He assumed it was Eli who’d called.

5So he ran to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you
called me.” And he said, “I did not call; lie down again.”
And he went and lay down. 6Then the Lord called yet again,
“Samuel!” So Samuel arose and went to Eli, and said, “Here I
am, for you called me.” He answered, “I did not call, my son; lie
down again.” 7(Now Samuel did not yet know
the Lord, nor was the word
of the Lord yet revealed to
him.)

Meaning while Samuel believed
in God, he’d never had this kind of direct, personal encounter with Him;
he didn’t know God’s ways yet.

8And the Lord
called Samuel again the third time. So he arose and went to Eli, and said,
“Here I am, for you did call me.” Then Eli perceived that
the Lord had called the
boy.

The last time Eli heard from God
it was through an un-named prophet in ch. 2 who told him because he’d
rejected God, God had rejected him.

It
was a troubling thing to now realize God had by-passed him, the high priest, to
speak instead to an underling, a child servant in his house.

9Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down; and
it shall be, if He calls you, that you must say, ‘Speak, Lord, for Your servant
hears.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place. 10Now
the Lord came and stood and
called as at other times, “Samuel! Samuel!”

The repetition marks an urgency
to the call.

And Samuel answered,
“Speak, for Your servant hears.” 11Then
the Lord said to Samuel:
“Behold, I will do something in Israel at which both ears of everyone who
hears it will tingle.

God is about to give Samuel a
prophecy of some really bad news for Eli & the tabernacle.

Shiloh will be destroyed & Eli’s house toppled
from its place as high priest.

This
news will cause the ears of everyone who hears it to “tingle.”

It’s
interesting that the only other time this phrase is used is to describe the
greater destruction of the temple of Solomon by the Babylonians.[2]

Both
times, it’s used to describe the calamity of the destruction of the holy
sanctuary.

The idea is the distress
that will come at the reversal that will take place in the expectation of the religious
but not godly -- God’s judgment falling on that which is supposed
to be the very center of His worship!

God
is not adverse to wiping out that which at one time He mightily blessed, when
it becomes corrupt & contrary to His will.

God
judged Shiloh & wiped out the tabernacle.

Some
400 years later He wiped out Jerusalem & the temple.

500
years after that He did it again.

12In that day I will perform against Eli all that I have
spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. 13For
I have told him that I will judge his house forever for the iniquity which he
knows, because his sons made themselves vile, and he did not restrain them.

Let’s take careful note
of that – God judged Eli because he failed to restrain his sons.

It
was within both his power & duty to remove Hophni & Phinehas from their
offices as priests, but he didn’t use his God-ordained authority to do
what ought to have been done.

So
he was considered as guilty as his sons.

His
consent to their evil was deemed by God as culpable as they.

That’s
an important truth for anyone in leadership to take to heart.

Being
placed in a position of authority carries with it greater accountability.

Many
people in leadership positions are rightly concerned about the over-use
of authority.

They
must not swing too far in the other direction and fail to use that authority
either, so that evil is allowed to grow unchecked.

14And therefore I have sworn to the house of Eli that
the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or
offering forever.”

God is not saying that IF
Eli & his sons had repented He wouldn’t forgive them.

He’s
saying that they’ve traversed the point of no return; they aren’t going
to repent.

And
without repentance, there’s no forgiveness.

No
sacrifice does any good without the right heart behind it.

This is something the merely
religious need to understand – that going through the motions
of religion do nothing in acquiring God’s favor.

Going
to church, dropping a 20 in the offering, taking communion, even getting
baptized, avail not at all if there isn’t a true heart of repentance
& submission to God behind them.

15So Samuel lay down until morning, and opened the
doors of the house of the Lord.
And Samuel was afraid to tell Eli the vision. 16Then
Eli called Samuel and said, “Samuel, my son!” He answered,
“Here I am.” 17And he said,
“What is the word that the Lord spoke to you? Please do not
hide it from me. God do so to you, and more also, if you hide
anything from me of all the things that He said to you.” 18Then Samuel told him everything, and hid
nothing from him. And he said, “It is the Lord. Let Him do what seems good to
Him.”

We’ve already seen
plenty evidence of Eli’s laziness – but this is unbelievable!

He
is so lazy when he hears news of his family’s ruin,
he shrugs it off & says, “Oh well!”

It
was God’s knowledge of this spiritual apathy that moved Him
to say in v. 14 there was no hope for Eli’s household.

19So Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the
ground.

Meaning that Samuel’s
ministry to the nation of Israel was marked by stand-out integrity.

His
counsel was wise. His prophetic messages all came to pass.

20And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that
Samuel had been established as a prophet of the Lord. 21Then
the Lord appeared again in
Shiloh. For the Lord
revealed Himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the Lord.

We covered this in depth 2
Sunday’s ago.

D. The Ark of the Covenant Among the
Philistines 4:1-6:12

1. The ark is captured 4:1-11

1a And the word of Samuel came to all Israel.

He replaced Eli as the
national leader.

As
this closes out the period of the Judges & brings the dawn of the era of
the Kingdom –

Most
Bible students see Samuel as the last of the Judges & the first of the
prophets who will also be a main feature of the period of the monarchy in
Israel.

Now Israel went out to battle
against the Philistines, and encamped beside Ebenezer; and the Philistines
encamped in Aphek.

We’ve already
encountered the Philistines in the Book of Judges when we read about Samson.

The
Philistines had arrived from the sea as part of a mass migration that came from
further west.

They’d
tried to settle the fertile northern coast of Egypt but had been repelled &
landed on the sparsely populated coast of Israel right about the same time Israel was making their conquest of the region.

They
quickly established 5 centers of power & began pressing eastward into the
coastal plain where they eventually ran into the western border of Israeli
settlement.

The Philistines had iron
weapons which were a decided advantage over Israel who were still using bronze.

They
were also a far more militaristic people who were able to field an army trained
for war.

Israel
was little more than a loose alliance of farmers.

The scene of this battle was
about 25 miles west of Shiloh, where the coastal plains meet the central
highlands.

The
Philistines were headquartered at Aphek while Israel was 2 miles east at what
would later be called Ebenezer.

2Then the Philistines put themselves in battle array
against Israel. And when they joined battle, Israel was defeated by the
Philistines, who killed about four thousand men of the army in the field.

A loss of 4,000 was
devastating, but it had not been a complete rout; Israel didn’t turn tail
& run away.

Darkness
came before the battle had been decided.

So
they returned to camp, licking their wounds & wondering how they’d be
able to endure another day’s battle with such huge losses.

3And when the people had come into the camp, the elders
of Israel said, “Why has the Lord
defeated us today before the Philistines? Let us bring the ark of the covenant
of the Lord from Shiloh to
us, that when it comes among us it may save us from the hand of our
enemies.”

These people had been raised
on the stories of the great victories God had worked for them over such might
armies as the Egyptians & Canaanites.

How
could they be defeated by these Philistine upstarts ?

Remembering the victories
their ancestors had known, they decided what they needed was more of
God’s help, so they hit on the idea of bringing up the ark of the
covenant – that golden box over which the glory of the Lord appeared.

But notice what they say
– “Let us bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord from Shiloh to us, that when it
comes among us it may save us from the hand of our
enemies.”

Not “He may save
us,” but “It.”

They’ve
thought the ark was a magical relic that would secure them
victory.

4So the people sent to Shiloh, that they might bring
from there the ark of the covenant of the Lord of hosts, who dwells between the cherubim.
And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were there with the
ark of the covenant of God.

The ark is given its fullest
description.

It’s
“the ark of the covenant of the Lord
of hosts, who dwells between the cherubim.”

In
other words, the ark belongs to God, Whose throne is in heaven; sitting between
angelic creatures who are so august in majesty they themselves inspire awe.

His
throne isn’t just some gold covered wood box sitting in a curtained room
& carried about on poles.

But the spiritual perception
of most of Israel had degenerated into little more than superstition by this
time.

Hophni
& Phinehas had no belief in God, but thought aligning themselves with a
possible victory over the Philistines would go far in advancing their position.

So
they accompanied the ark into battle.

5And when the ark of the covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all Israel
shouted so loudly that the earth shook.

They were so excited!

6Now when the Philistines heard the noise of the shout,
they said, “What does the sound of this great shout in the
camp of the Hebrews mean?” Then they understood that the ark
of the Lord had come into
the camp.

Of course they had sentries
who’d seen the ark being carried into the enemy camp & sent word back
about what was going on.

7So the Philistines were afraid, for they said,
“God has come into the camp!” And they said, “Woe to us! For
such a thing has never happened before.

It seems the Philistines had
a greater sense of spiritual perception than Israel.

It wasn’t the ark
they feared but the God the ark belonged to.

In
all their previous encounters with Israel, they’d never had to face this
fabled & legendary piece of holy furniture – though they’d
heard all about Israel’s glorious past in the Exodus.

8Woe to us! Who will deliver us from the hand of these
mighty gods? These are the gods who struck the Egyptians with all
the plagues in the wilderness.

News of what God had done for
Israel some 400 years before in the Exodus & conquest of Canaan was well
known throughout the Mediterranean world at that time.

The Philistines mistakenly
assumed Israel worshipped several gods because everyone else did, & because
one of the generic names for God used by the Jews was ‘Elohim’
– the plural of El.

The
Jews used this name for the One True God, not because they believed in many
gods but because they believed God was so great in glory it was best to assign
Him a name that spoke of abundance = Elohim.

9Be strong and conduct yourselves like men, you
Philistines, that you do not become servants of the Hebrews, as they have been
to you. Conduct yourselves like men, and fight!”

They indulged in a little
positive self-talk here – then went out to battle.

10So the Philistines fought, and Israel was defeated, and every man fled to his tent. There was a very great slaughter, and
there fell of Israel thirty thousand foot soldiers. 11Also the
ark of God was captured; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, died.

This was a major catastrophe!

Not
only was the defeat nearly 10 times as great as the previous day, but the
precious ark was captured & the priests were killed. [Some might say,
“Good riddance!”]

The reason for the defeat was
3-fold:

1)
The Philistines fought with courage & desperation.

2)
The Israelites thought the battle would be a piece of cake since the ark would
do the work FOR THEM.

3)
God with held His help because He could not bless Israel’s superstitions.

We can make the same mistake
the Israelites made –

That
because we’re God’s people who’ve been promised His presence
& blessing, we don’t have to do anything.

God’s
blessing should not lull us into inaction.

On
the contrary – it ought to spur us on to even greater work, knowing our
labor is not in vain in Him.

There was nothing wrong with
bringing the ark into the camp if it had only served to remind the Jewish
soldiers of their covenant with God.

If
they had gone forth that day against the Philistines trusting hard in Him while
thrusting hard into the enemy, they likely would have won.

As it was—God
wasn’t obligated to bless them just because of the ark.

He
wouldn’t allow His arm to be twisted by the superstitions of the
Israelites. God is not some genie to be summoned at the will of man. You
can’t manipulate God.[3]

2. Eli dies 4:12-22

12Then a man of Benjamin ran from the battle line the
same day, and came to Shiloh with his clothes torn and dirt on his head. 13Now
when he came, there was Eli, sitting on a seat by the wayside watching,
for his heart trembled for the ark of God. And when the man came into the city
and told it, all the city cried out.

It’s interesting that
Eli was more concerned for the ark than his sons.

God had
already told him his house would be torn down.

He’d
already chalked Hophni & Phinehas off as lost.

The
ark was another matter.

As
the high priest, ultimately he was responsible for what happened
to it.

14When Eli heard the noise of the outcry, he said,
“What does the sound of this tumult mean?”
And the man came quickly and told Eli.

As soon as the guy got to the
outskirts of the city he gave a report of the battle.

A
great cry went up which Eli heard but didn’t know the details.

As
soon as the runner got to Eli he gave him the news he most dreaded.

15Eli was ninety-eight years old, and his eyes were so
dim that he could not see. 16Then the man said to Eli,
“I am he who came from the battle. And I fled today from the
battle line.” And he said, “What happened, my son?” 17So
the messenger answered and said, “Israel has fled before the Philistines,
and there has been a great slaughter among the people. Also your two sons,
Hophni and Phinehas, are dead; and the ark of God has been captured.” 18Then
it happened, when he made mention of the ark of God, that Eli fell off the seat
backward by the side of the gate; and his neck was broken and he died, for the
man was old and heavy. And he had judged Israel forty years.

At the word the ark was taken
by the enemy, Eli fainted & fell.

He
was so old, brittle, & heavy that his neck broke, killing him instantly.

In modern terms, the ark had
being captured by the Philistines would have been like the president of the
United States handing the nuclear launch codes over to Osama bin Laden.

Eli had utterly failed
in his role as high priest.

God
gave him 40 years to get things right, but he only went from bad to worse.

In the late 1970’s, a
five-line inscription was found on an ostracon [piece of broken pottery].

It
was found inside an iron-age grain silo in the ruins of a small village not far
from the site of this battle.

It
was a Philistine account of this battle, describing the capture of the ark,
mentions the priest Hophni, and tells where the ark was taken, then returned to
Israel.

This
is the earliest known extra-biblical reference to an Old Testament event &
an OT person.[4]

19Now his daughter-in-law, Phinehas’ wife, was
with child, due to be delivered; and when she heard the news that
the ark of God was captured, and that her father-in-law and her husband were
dead, she bowed herself and gave birth, for her labor pains came upon
her. 20And about the time of her death the women who stood by
her said to her, “Do not fear, for you have borne a son.” But she
did not answer, nor did she regard it.21Then she
named the child [no glory] Ichabod, saying, “The glory has departed from Israel!” because the ark of God had been captured and because of her father-in-law
and her husband. 22And she said, “The
glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God has been captured.”

This poor woman.

She’s
at full term – gets the news that her husband has just died, her
father-in-law, who would then take charge of her care, has also just died, and
the greatest national disaster in Jewish history has just taken place.

The
grief throws here into labor, which drains her of life.

Her
parting gift is to give her son a truly icky name –
“Gloryless!”

According to other passages,
it seems that not far behind the messenger that carried this bad news to Shiloh were the Philistines who attacked and destroyed the city & tabernacle.
[Psalm 78:60-64; Jeremiah 7:12; 26:9]

3. The Philistines troubles with
the ark Ch. 5

1Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought
it from Ebenezer to Ashdod.

Ashdod, was the capital of
Philistia at the time.

It
was about 30 miles SW of where they’d nabbed it at Ebenezer.

Ashdod is 3 miles inland & the most extensively
excavated Philistine site.

2When the Philistines took the ark of God, they brought
it into the house of Dagon and set it by Dagon.

Dagon was the chief deity of
the Philistines.

For
many years archaeologists thought Dagon was a half fish, half human idol as
would befit a maritime people like the Philistines.

But
that’s been almost universally rejected in light of further discovery.

Dagon
was the father of Baal & was widely worshipped by peoples of the ancient Middle East.

It was a common practice in
the ancient world to take the chief trophies of battle into the temple of
one’s patron god and set them before his/her idol as a kind of gift.

The idea was to show the
power & supremacy of the victor’s god over the defeated’s
deity.

Knowing what we do about God,
this is a perfect set up for some fun!

3And when the people of Ashdod arose early in the morning,
there was Dagon, fallen on its face to the earth before the ark of the Lord. So they took Dagon and set it in
its place again.

During the night, the idol of
Dagon fell down as though it was lying prostrate before the ark – in the position
of submission & worship!

The
Philistines were terribly embarrassed by this; this wasn’t at all the way
it was supposed to work.

So
they propped Dagon back up again, asking one another if they’d felt the
earthquake the night before.

4And when they arose early the next morning, there was
Dagon, fallen on its face to the ground before the ark of the Lord. The head of Dagon and both the
palms of its hands were broken off on the threshold;
only Dagon’s torso was left of it. 5Therefore
neither the priests of Dagon nor any who come into Dagon’s house tread on
the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day.

On the second morning, they
again found the idol toppled over before the ark, but this time Dagon’s
head and hands were broken off, and lying at the door.

This was God’s way of
playing with them.

There
was no way an earthquake could have done this.

This
was the hand of God.

Dagon
first bows down to God, then God removes his head and hands and places them
neatly where all can realize someone far more powerful than they has been at
work.

God removed the idol’s
head because beheading was the ultimate form of execution for authority.

He
removed Dagon’s hands to get across the idea that the idol was powerless
to stop what was done to it.

So
much for the ark of the covenant being a trophy!

And even though the message
was so clear, the Philistines didn’t take it to heart.

Though
Dagon had been shown to be a worthless piece of junk, they continued to hallow
the doorway of his temple long after.

What they ought to have done
was haul that idol out & burned it and converted to Yahweh.

But
they didn’t – so God sent more evidence of His power.

6But the hand of the Lord was heavy on the people of Ashdod, and He ravaged them
and struck them with tumors, both Ashdod and its territory.

There’s been a lot of
conjecture over the years on what these tumors were.

The
older view is that they were hemorrhoids and that God was both afflicting and
mocking the Philistines by this plague.

But
the severity of this judgment points to something more serious & most
commentators now conclude these were probably the tumors that accompany the
bubonic plague.

The Plague overwhelms the
immune system and causes the lymph nodes to swell up to massive proportions,
causing intense pain.

A
bit later we’ll see that mice were connected to this judgment, and we
know that the plague is carried about in the fleas that infest rats & mice.

7And when the men of Ashdod saw how it was,
they said, “The ark of the God of Israel must not remain with us, for His
hand is harsh toward us and Dagon our god.”

It didn’t take them
long to put 2 & 2 together & come up with the 4 of Yahweh’s
displeasure with them.

They
may have defeated Israel, but they had not defeated Israel’s God.

8Therefore they sent and gathered to themselves all the
lords of the Philistines, and said, “What shall we do with the ark of the
God of Israel?” And they answered, “Let the ark of the God of Israel be carried away to Gath.” So they carried the ark of the God of Israel away.

This is just bone-headed!

Why
didn’t they oust Dagon & embrace Yahweh?

Instead,
they figure the best way to relive the suffering of Ashdod is to send the ark
to Gath, another of the 5 main Philistine cities.

I
guess the ruler of Gath had missed this meeting!

9So it was, after they had carried it away, that the
hand of the Lord was against
the city with a very great destruction; and He struck the men of the
city, both small and great, and tumors broke out on them. 10Therefore
they sent the ark of God to Ekron. So it was, as the ark of God came to Ekron,
that the Ekronites cried out, saying, “They have brought the ark of the
God of Israel to us, to kill us and our people!” 11So
they sent and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines, and said, “Send
away the ark of the God of Israel, and let it go back to its own place, so that
it does not kill us and our people.” For there was a deadly destruction
throughout all the city; the hand of God was very heavy there. 12And
the men who did not die were stricken with the tumors, and the cry of the city
went up to heaven.

All
of this gives further weight to the idea that this is the bubonic plague, not
just a bad case of hemorrhoids, which last time I checked, don’t kill
people.

The grand lesson from these
chapters is that even when those who are supposed to be God’s people get
off track and lose touch with God, horribly misrepresenting Him to the world,
God is not left without His own means of securing & guarding
His glory & reputation.

Israel’s faith had degenerated into little more than
superstition which God refused to have any part with.

He
used defeat in battle and loss of their national emblems as the means of
correcting them.

And
in the meantime, He used the presence of those emblems among the enemy to
manifest His power.

Here’s what we can
learn from this –

Even
when we’re living less than perfect lives, blowing our testimony &
witness among those we hope to see come to faith,

God
is still at work in mind-blowing ways to get through to the lost.

This
doesn’t excuse us, but it ought to give us hope for the
salvation of the lost, knowing that it isn’t all up to us.

Just as God was moving among
the Philistines, He’s moving in the lives of those around us.

He’s
preparing them for the work of our testimony.

Be
encouraged to share Him with the unbelievers around you.

You
might be surprised at how your words will join to what’s happening in
their lives and be used to bring them to faith.

[1]Clear eyes are seen in scripture as a sign of good
health & vigor. Deut 34:7 says that though he was 120, when Moses died, his
eyes were still bright.